all my life long
by vodkaquiet
Summary: To the stars they were ants.


She was fifteen and her fingers curled around his.

Levi pulled his hand away. His skin hurt to touch her.

There were no dreams they softly fell into, only nightmares that harbored like sea-sick lovers.

They had been backed into a corner and painted as villains. He thought it funny that he was the one standing beside her – their shoulders almost touching, their bones crying out for warmth.

It was fitting in the way no other mask would stretch over their war-worn faces and every emotion had been tried on for size only to tear and peel away.

The truth rang in her bones. She had always been alone, but she waited, almost wantonly, for the sharp reminder of loss. It was better than nothingness.

Mikasa collapsed against him and brought them both to their knees. Her face was twisted in agony. Levi thought, 'that was how someone was supposed to look when they were in pain.' There was nothing beautiful about it. It was ugly and horrible. Her heart crashed against him like a wave that wanted to wash him away.

She didn't cry. That would come later. Grief followed her home and made its bed in her heart.

Levi didn't comfort her. He had told her to look away. That she didn't want to see this. But she had seen worse. The firing squad lifted their guns. She watched as they put down a "wild animal." Eren, the last of her family, her home, her… She had so many names for him and none of them did him justice. Bound and drugged he looked at her pleadingly.

Shifter or no, innocent or not he was her friend and she could see the love and fear in his eyes. Mikasa wondered how many more would be dead if not for him. She would have been among the countless, meaningless dead without him. Lives ceased to exist if there was no one to remember them. If he hadn't been that same boy who had risked his life to save her she, and so many others, would be dead, but that didn't stop them from pulling the trigger.

* * *

She was sixteen and standing trial for treason.

If being an idiot was a crime they were all guilty.

Levi let her blame him. She needed someone to hate. Someone to fill her mouth with vulgarities and bloody her knuckles on. He'd never seen grief wash away such a strong person. But even the strongest people had their breaking point and she had already died once.

She resembled an old book – her spine had been ripped out and her words were faded.

"I am trying to save your life," Levi whispered. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life in chains?"

"The least you could do is not look guilty," His voice was sandpaper on her skin.

"We are guilty," Mikasa said drily.

They had all believed in Eren. She still believed in him. It didn't matter how many times Levi told her he wasn't innocent. That he had killed people.

'We've killed people.' She had reminded him.

He wondered what it was like to love someone so terribly.

"Humanity's last hope," Levi scoffed (under his breath.)

"How do you plead?"

Her only crime was love. _Guilty—_

"Not guilty," Her mouth closed around lies. It wasn't a good look for her. Levi wore bullshit like no one else.

* * *

She was seventeen and too curious for her own good. His patience was wearing thin – down to the razor wires of his skin and the notches of his teeth.

"What happened to your hand?" Mikasa asked. She took his hand in hers. Turning it over and over in her small hands, her calloused thumb ran across the lines of his palm.

"I wish you wouldn't do that." Levi groused.

"What?" She asked, not bothering to hide her grin.

"You damn well know _what." _

"Touch you?" Her lips stretched into a smile across his skin, like a map to some secret place inside of her.

"When was the last time someone touched you like this?"

She kissed his knuckles. Bloodied and bruised from the war he waged with himself. His stomach tightened. Instinct kicked him in the teeth. It told him to push her away. Run if he had to. Do anything but the things he wanted to do to her.

She ran her hand down his chest. Her fingers snagged on his belt, tugging at it coyly, before her hand slipped between his legs. She breathed in that small "ah" he couldn't help but breath as his head tilted back instinctually. _Fuck._

"Stop," His voice was low, but sharp.

"Do you want me to stop?" Her hand moved faster against him, drawing out a throaty moan.

"I won't tell," She slowed, "If that's what you're worried about."

"You think they'd believe you over me, or care? Men have done worse."

"But you haven't." She said definitively.

His hands were rough and his eyes burned with the words he didn't say. He had never been reserved. Men like him didn't need manners to survive.

Levi pressed himself against her. She breathed hard. He could feel her heart beating its wings against the cage of her ribs. Her lips were red and swollen from biting them and would have only looked better with his over them, but he didn't kiss her.

He bent her over the small table. His fingers curled in her hair and the heel of his hand pushed her cheek against the cold surface.

"How can you be so sure?" He mouthed against the cartilage of her ear. His erection pressed into her thigh.

He had her pinned under his weight. She wanted to touch him or at least to touch herself. She could feel him through his pants. It was taking him everything not to come.

"Because…you're a good man," It was hard to breathe with her heart in her throat.

"This is _not _what good men do."

His fingers left marks in her pale skin.

"Are you scared?" He didn't have to see her eyes to know the answer.

"No."

She wasn't afraid of anything or anyone and that scared him. Fear was good. It had kept them alive this long.

This had been her idea. Her little game when she couldn't escape her own mind.

He pulled her pants down. She inhaled loudly, cutting the silence finely, at his hand on her bare skin. He wasn't shy or gentle. It certainly wasn't the first time he had touched another person like this, but it was the first time he had touched her, and yet it was so familiar… intimate. She hated that word and hated herself even more for thinking it.

He started a fire in her. Her nails dug into her palms and she bit at the inside of her mouth to keep from moaning.

She felt his open palm against her ass, harder and harder until her skin was flecked with red. His fingers gripped at her flesh. She rolled her hips back into him. She heard him groan low in his throat. He was as desperate for release as she was, if not more.

His lips brushed against her hair and he bit into her shoulder. He felt every stutter of her body as she came.

Her hand clutched at his. He hesitated, almost returning the gesture. He gripped the edge of the table. He was still hard, throbbing against the confinement of his pants. His forehead rested on her sweaty back for a second, long enough to regain his composure.

"Do you want me to?" She asked, pulling up her pants.

_To what? _He wondered, smirking. He knew she didn't have a clue what she was asking.

"No." He just said. "You should go."

He could hear her grind her teeth.

"You got what you wanted, didn't you?"

"Don't act like I was the only one who wanted…needed that."

"Mikasa," His voice was inviting and that set the hairs on her neck on edge. He took a step closer to her, "Get the fuck out of my room."

* * *

There was no victory in survival. No glory in death.

At eighteen she believed in no one. Eyes dusty and focused on her worn leather boots, hands shoved into her pockets, hair in her eyes. She wore it long. She had survived long enough for it to grow back. Twisting down her back and absorbing the sun.

She could remember almost dying and then Eren or Armin or _he _– Captain fucking Levi –saved her. She remembered having no hope, blood on her tongue and salt in her veins. Her wrists were bound and her fingernails were broken and bloody from clawing at the wood floor. She should have closed her eyes, but she couldn't. It was so easy to look away from death, even when it was all around, but she couldn't.

She had died, twice, and been bought back in the image of a savior. That's what the world needed after all – someone to believe in when the time was right, someone to vilify when she failed to save everyone.

But there were no saviors.

Just a weight that fell on heavy shoulders, it broke their backs, but they dragged themselves from their beds and put on their gear and laced up their boots.

"Are you dead?" Levi asked.

"No." She breathed hard.

"Are you sure?" He looked down at her. Their training sessions were the only time he got to stand over her, towering in attitude and self-satisfaction alone. "Because the moment you think you're dead, you are."

"What are you doing down there then? Get the fuck up,"

"Yes, sir," She grimaced. As soon as she started to get to her feet he pushed her down against the ground. She felt his boot on the small of her back.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting even," He climbed on top of her.

"I don't want to fight."

"Neither do I," His voice was husky. His thumb brushed over her lips. Her tongue ran over the scratchy pads of his fingers. She hadn't forgotten his taste. He had missed the feel of her and her smell on him.

* * *

It was her nineteenth birthday and they didn't celebrate. She was more stubborn than ever and beautiful too. But he didn't tell her things that might have made her smile or stay because he knew his breath would have been wasted. She was like him. They had never been young and sweetness only rubbed them raw.

"I'm going with you." Her hand closed around his.

"I'm better on my own." Levi didn't look at her. He didn't have to. He knew she was pissed. She was beyond pissed. She was _angry. _It suffused her body. She was rage's canvas. It brush stroked her cheeks red and tied her stomach into knots and darkened her eyes. They were burnt down empires. Smoke at the back of his throat when he kissed her.

"The hell you are," Mikasa pulled him to her. Hard, pressed against her chest, she twisted his arms behind his back.

He kissed her slowly. His lips caressed a smile that wasn't there. Her mouth was hot on his and needful.

In the moonlight her skin was silver.

He wasn't afraid to touch her. There no songs in their lungs. Only dust and memories, his ghosts were at his back – pushing him forward, towards the edge – and she saw hers in her sleep. He didn't hesitant to grip her hips and pull her to him until her gasps echoed in his heart. Grime coated his fingers when he touched it and the fixtures were covered in plastic.

He buried his face in her hair. She had let it grow out carelessly. She hid behind it and he parted it like a curtain to brush his fingers over her sullen face. It was the darkness he craved.

* * *

"I thought you were dead."

"I was. I got better." Mikasa raised an eyebrow at him. Smirking the way he had, cruelly against her youthful skin.

She was both at once the cigarette between his lips and the stars he looked up at infinite in the night sky – burnt out impressions of light among the darkness. He needed her to breathe.

She was twenty and her mouth was hot on his. He kissed her hard, biting her bottom lip until he drank metallic. Thumb pressed against her pulse. It thrashed for release.

He hadn't seen her in little over a year and it felt like his lifetime – waiting to see her, to touch her, to kiss her _again. _

He buried himself in her.

"I would have stayed. If you asked,"

"I know." His mouth ghosted over her ear. _I don't want to talk. _

They were unkind with their hearts.

Twice he had saved her. But every day she kept him alive.

He told himself the moment he felt her skin beneath his skin and caressed her lips with his that he wouldn't fall in love. And he hadn't.

He had fallen into something so much more.

"I'm glad you're not dead."

* * *

She was twenty-one and he'd never seen her cry. Not even when Eren died. She had been preparing herself for his death the moment he saved her life.

Her tears were astringent on his skin.

They lay in the fields. The blue sky folding over them like a blanket they had held far into the afternoon.

"Why are you crying?" He asked softly.

"I don't know." She had asked Eren that same question. Before their eyes had tired to death, before their hands knew the shape of each other, and their dreams faded to the white char of nightmares. They wake up with smoke on their tongues, gasping and clinging to one another.

Her hands were in his. He gripped tighter, lifting them to the sky.

"That cloud looks like a titan. And that cloud," He was trying to make her laugh. It was strange how she moved him to shades of himself he could barely recognize.

"Looks like a big ass titan?" She finished for him.

He kissed the back of her neck and smiled. "How did you know?"

His arms were snug around her waist. He rolled her underneath him and kissed away her tears.

"What's wrong?"

"I didn't expect to live this long," She looked away from him, feeling the grass blades against her cheek. "I don't know what to do."

"Live. We survived, now it's time to live." It seemed like such a simple thing and yet it scared her more than anything.

"I don't know how."

"We'll figure it out together."


End file.
